Dreamfever

  Barrons said, “It’s possible she might make all of it unnecessary. But it’s still too soon to tell. ”

  A dozen feet from the door, I recognized it. I looked away, as if, like an ostrich with my head in the sand, I would be safe.

  But I wasn’t safe.

  “It can’t be,” I said.

  I looked back, marched to the door, opened it, and gently removed the tape holding it to the glass.

  It was.

  I stared at it for a long moment, then closed my eyes.

  “The LM’s not coming,” I told Barrons, stepping into his study. As always, my gaze slid uneasily to the huge mirror that was part of the vast network of Unseelie Silvers: doorway into a hellish no-man’s-land of ice and monsters. But my fascination/fear of it held new poignancy today, and new relevance.

  “You can’t know that,” Barrons dismissed.

  Seated behind the massive desk, he appeared sculpted from material of the same tension and density, hard with anger.

  I gave him a smile. It was that or burst into tears, and there was no way that was happening. “Trouble at home? Boys aren’t behaving?” I said sweetly.

  “Get to the point, Ms. Lane. ”

  I began to hand him what I’d removed from the front door. My hand trembled. I steeled myself, and when I extended it again, my hand was perfectly steady.

  He glanced at the photo. “It’s your sister. So?”

  Indeed it was. She was laughing, on an openmouthed smile, standing at the entrance to Trinity College.

  “Turn it over,” I said tightly.

  He flipped it.

  “Read it. ”

  “She was happy,” he read. “I love you, Mom and Dad. I’ll be home as soon as I can. Mac. ” He paused before continuing. A muscle jerked in his jaw. “1247 LaRuhe. Fifth Silver on the right. Bring the stones. If you bring Barrons, they both die. ” He looked up at me. “He’s got your parents. Fuck. ”

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  That pretty much summed it up.

  “This is a terrible plan,” Barrons said for the tenth time.

  “You’re the one who came up with it,” I reminded. “And I agreed. We’re not going back now. ” I continued stuffing things in my backpack.

  There was no other way. I’d wanted a confrontation and I was going to get it. Just not the way I’d hoped. “Look, Barrons, you’ve filled my head with more knowledge about life than anyone else ever has, except my dad. Between the two of you, if I can’t survive, I should be shot. I should be put out of everyone’s misery. ”

  “Was that a thank-you, Ms. Lane?”

  I thought about it and shrugged. “Yes. ”

  Behind me, he made a strange noise. “That’s it. You’re not going. ”

  “Because I thanked you? What kind of logic is that?”

  “The kind of person that thanks another person never survives. Have you learned nothing?”

  “He has my parents. ”

  “If he gets you, he could get the whole world. ”

  “He’s not going to get me. I’m going to do exactly what you told me to do. No deviations. No independent decisions. I’ll go into the house, snap a photo of whatever destination the Silver shows, and text it to you. Between that and my brand, you’ll track me. You’ll bring your … whatever they are in behind me or get there some other way, and you’ll rescue us. ” And I would kill the LM. Bury my spear to the hilt in his chest. Maybe his eyeball. Stand there and watch him begin to rot. I hoped he died slowly.

  “The Silvers are too unpredictable. Something could go wrong even in the brief time you pass from one to the next. ”

  “You wondered if I had the balls. Now you know. Besides, he needs me, remember? He’s not going to take any chances. ”

  “Anytime you use the Silvers, you’re taking a chance. Especially if you’re carrying OOPs. Power provokes change in places of unpredictable power. ”

  “I know. You’ve told me five times now. I’m to keep my spear hidden and the stones in the pouch. ”

  “With the holes in the prison walls, and Cruce’s curse … there’s no bloody telling what could go wrong. No, Ms. Lane, this just won’t work. ”

  “I’m going in, Barrons, with or without your help. ”

  “I could stop you,” he said, so softly that I knew he was not only seriously considering it but a breath away from chaining me up somewhere.

  I inhaled sharply. “Remember the child dying in your arms?”

  His nostrils flared. The thing rattled in his chest.

  “Don’t make me live it, Barrons. Don’t choose my grief for me. You have no right. ”

  “They aren’t your biological parents. ”

  “Do you think the heart only follows blood?”

  A few minutes later I was preparing to walk out the door, turn right, and head into what had once been the city’s biggest Dark Zone.

  I knew that by the time I walked the fourteen blocks to 1247 LaRuhe, I’d be dripping sweat, but I was taking no chances. In case the Silver was icy, I’d layered my clothing deep. In case it was dark, I was wearing my MacHalo. In case I had to be there awhile before Barrons broke us out, and in case my parents needed food, I had my pack on my back, stuffed with protein bars, water, Unseelie flesh, and a miscellany of other items Barrons and I had taken turns cramming in. In case the LM insisted on seeing them, I had the three stones in a black pouch covered with delicately shimmering wards. My gun was over my shoulder and my spear under it. I had no intention of needing any of the items I was bringing, but I also had no intention of ever going anywhere without a fully equipped pack again until the last Fae had been wiped from our world. For the tenth time in the past two days, I wished I had V’lane’s name in my tongue and wondered again where he was and what had happened to him.

  My cell phone was in my palm, ready to snap a photo and transmit it, so Barrons could see the LM’s destination in the glass. I glanced down at it. There was something nagging at me and had been ever since he’d told me his plan. There was an inconsistency lurking at the edge of my awareness. A fact that didn’t rest comfortably with the others.

  “If I understand the Silvers, they all show destinations. And you expect the LM’s to show a destination, too. So why does your Silver show a pathway winding through what looks like a graveyard haunted by demons? That’s not a destination. ”

  He said nothing.

  “You’ve linked more than two Silvers together, haven’t you?” I frowned. “What if the LM has done the same thing? What if his doesn’t show a destination, either?”

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  “He’s not adept enough to stack Silvers. ”

  When I get epiphanies, they come hard and fast. “Oh, God, I get it!” I exclaimed. It was no wonder he hadn’t wanted to explain the Silvers to me! “The mirror in your study connects to what’s beneath your garage! You ‘stacked’ mirrors to form a passageway filled with demon watchdogs so if anyone found their way into your mirror, they’d never survive the gauntlet you make them run. ” Instead of one mirror instantly connecting to another, he’d arranged a multitude of mirrors to form a long, deadly corridor. “That’s how you get to the three floors beneath the garage. That’s why I couldn’t find the entrance. It’s been right under my nose in my bookstore all along!”

  “Your bookstore?” He snorted. Then he laughed. “Walk out of this with your parents, the stones, and Darroc dead, Ms. Lane, and I’ll give you the bloody thing. ”

  I felt suddenly breathless. “Are we talking figurative or literal?”

  “Literal. Lock, stock, and barrel. ”

  “Deed and all?” My heart hammered. I loved BB&B.

  “To the store. Not my garage or car collection. ”

  “In other words, you’ll always be out back, breathing down my neck,” I said dryly.

  “Never doubt it. ” He gave me a wolf smile.

 
“Throw in the Viper?”

  “And the Lamborghini. ”

  1247 LaRuhe looked exactly the same as it did the first time I saw it, last August.

  Six months ago, when I arrived in Dublin, I didn’t believe in anything remotely paranormal, had never seen a Fae in my life, and wouldn’t have believed one existed for anything in the world.

  Then, a mere two weeks later, I’d been standing right where I was now, in the middle of a Dark Zone, watching as the Lord Master released a flood of Unseelie into our world through a gate fashioned from a stone dolmen that had been hidden in a warehouse behind this house.

  How quickly my world had changed. Two lousy weeks!

  The tall, fancy brick house at 1247 LaRuhe, with its ornate limestone façade, was as out of place in the dilapidated industrial neighborhood as I was in the middle of this whole mess.

  Delicate wrought iron fenced in a dirt lawn with three skeletal dying trees. The house’s many-mullioned windows were painted black. There was an enormous dirt crater behind the residence. V’lane had not just “squashed” the LM’s dolmen—as I’d asked on the day he gifted me with the illusion of playing volleyball with Alina at the beach—he’d blasted it right out of existence, leaving a gaping hole. I regretted not being more specific and asking him to demolish the house, too. Then I wouldn’t be standing here, about to enter it again and to step into one of those mirrors I’d found so terrifying the first time I’d seen them. Then again, the LM would merely have sent me to some other awful place, I was sure.

  I climbed the stairs, pushed open the door, and stepped into the elegant foyer, my boots rapping smartly on obsidian-and-ivory marble floors. I passed beneath a glittering chandelier, beyond ornate dual staircases and plush furnishings.

  I knew that upstairs was the Lord Master’s bedroom, with its grand high Louis XIV bed, velvet drapes, sumptuous bathroom, and a fabulous walk-in closet. I knew he wore the finest clothing, the most expensive shoes. I knew he had a taste for the best of everything. Including my sister.

  There was no point in delaying the inevitable. Besides, I wanted to get in and get this over with so I could lay claim to my bookstore. Barrons had flabbergasted me with his offer. I didn’t know what to make of it. Right now he was waiting, back at the bookstore, for my photo. His … associates were supposedly closing in behind me. I entered the long, formal parlor, where a dozen large gilt-edged mirrors hung on the walls, and walked through the room, past furnishings Sotheby’s and Christie’s would have dueled to the death over.

  The first mirror on the right was completely black. I wondered if it was shut. It looked dead. I peered at it. The dense blackness suddenly swelled and expanded, and for a moment I was afraid it would explode from its gilt frame, grow like the Blob, and swallow me up. But at the peak of its crest, it thumped loudly, made a squishing sound, and deflated. After a moment it swelled again. Squished. Deflated. I shuddered. It was a giant black heart hanging on the wall, pumping away.

  I moved on. The second mirror showed an empty bedroom.

  The third was open on a prison cell containing human children. They reached through bars for me with bony, pale arms and imploring eyes. I froze. There were a hundred of them or more crammed into the tiny cell. They were filthy and bruised, with torn clothing.

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  I had no time for this. I couldn’t afford the emotion. I stepped closer to the mirror and turned my palm toward it to snap a picture so that later, after I’d gotten my parents out, I could make Barrons help me find this place in the Silvers and free them. But just as I was about to press the button, one of the children opened his mouth, snapped at me with vicious teeth no human child had, and made a suggestion to me no human child would, and I backed hastily away, cursing myself for allowing emotion to fog my mind.

  Dani had said some of the Unseelie were imprisoning children. With that awful thought in mind, I’d looked into the Silver and seen its denizens colored by my fear and worry, which had airbrushed telling clues. If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have noticed the subtle wrongness in the shape of the “children’s” heads, the unnatural ferocity in their tiny faces.

  I didn’t spare a glance for the fourth mirror but walked straight to the fifth. At a slight angle from it, so the LM wouldn’t see me doing it, I snapped a picture, sent it to Barrons’ cell phone, then slid my phone into my pocket.

  Only then did I let the impact of the scene hit me.

  We had a definite destination.

  He was in my living room, at my house, in Ashford, Georgia.

  The Lord Master had my mom and dad bound to chairs and gagged, with a dozen black-and-crimson-clad guards standing around them.

  The Lord Master was in my hometown! What had he done to it? Had he brought Shades with him? Were Unseelie walking the streets even now, feeding off my friends?

  The one place I’d tried so hard to keep safe, and I’d failed!

  I’d let V’lane take me there, given in to my weakness, stood outside my own home. Was that the fatal act that drew the Lord Master’s attention? Or had he always known and only now decided to make use of it?

  In the mirror, across the fifteen or so feet that separated us, my daddy shook his head. His eyes said, Don’t you dare, baby. You stay on that side of the mirror. Don’t you dare trade yourself for us.

  How could I not? He was the one who’d taught me that the heart had reasons of which reason knew nothing, the only quote of Pascal’s I remembered. All the reason in the world couldn’t have talked me into turning away now, even if I hadn’t had Barrons as backup. Even without a safety net, this was a wire I’d have walked. I might have found out my biological mother’s name last night. I might have even begun thinking of myself as Mac O’Connor, but Jack and Rainey Lane were my mom and dad, and always would be.

  I walked to the wall. Daddy’s eyes were wild now, and I knew, if not for the gag, he’d be roaring at me.

  I stepped up, into the Silver.

  But now we see through a glass darkly and, the truth, before it is revealed to all, face to face, we see in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when they seem obscure to us and as if amalgamated with a will wholly bent on evil.

  —Umberto Eco

  The Name of the Rose

  Good of you to come,” mocked the Lord Master. “Nice hat. ” Entering the Silver was like pressing forward into a gluey membrane. The surface rippled thickly when I touched it. When I tried to step into it, it resisted. I pushed harder, and it took considerable effort to force my boot to puncture the silvery skin. I thrust in up to my hip.

  Still the mirror pressed back at me with a buoyant elasticity.

  For a moment I stood half in each world, my face through the mirror, the back of my head in the house, one leg in the Silver, one leg out. Just when I thought it would expel me with the snap of a giant rubber band, it yielded—sucked me in, warm and unpleasantly wet—and squirted me out on the other side, stumbling.

  I’d expected to find myself standing in the living room, but I was in a tunnel of sorts, of moist pink membrane. My living room was farther away than it had looked from outside the mirror. There were forty or so feet between me and my parents. Barrons had been wrong. The LM was more adept with Silvers than he’d thought. Not only was he capable of stacking Silvers, the tunnel hadn’t been at all visible from beyond the glass. In tennis-speak, this set went to the LM. But there was no way he was winning the match.

  “As if I had a choice. ” I wiped my face with a sleeve, scrubbing at a thin layer of smelly, slippery afterbirth. It was dripping off my MacHalo. I’d thought about removing it before I’d entered the mirror (it’s a little hard for people to take you seriously when you’re wearing one), but now I was glad I hadn’t. It was no wonder people avoided the Silvers.

  You had every choice, my dad’s eyes said furiously. You chose the wrong o
ne.

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  My mother’s eyes were saying way more than that. She began with the mess that was my tousled black hair sticking out from under my “hat,” went nearly ballistic over the tight leather pants I was wearing, made short, scathing work of my butchered nails, and by the time she got around to the automatic weapon that kept slipping around my shoulder, banging into my hip, I had to tune her out.

  I took a step forward.

  “Not so fast,” said the Lord Master. “Show me the stones. ”

  I swung my gun forward into my other hand, slipped the pack off my shoulder, opened it, fished out the black pouch, and held it up.

  “Get them out. Show them to me. ”

  “Barrons didn’t think that was a good idea. ”

  “I told you not to involve Barrons, and I don’t give a fuck what he thinks. ”

  “You told me not to bring him. I had to involve him. He’s the one who had the stones. Have you ever tried to steal anything from Barrons?”

  The look on his face said he had. “If he interferes, they die. ”

  “I got your message loud and clear the first time. He won’t interfere. ” I needed to get closer. I needed to be between the LM and his guards and my parents when Barrons and his men arrived. I needed to be in stabbing distance. Barrons planned to reconfigure his Silver to connect to whatever destination the Lord Master was at, but he’d said it would take time, depending on the location. Stall, he’d ordered. Once I get the photo, I’ll work on connecting to the other end. My men will come in behind you as soon as I have a lock on the location.

  “Put down the spear, your gun, the pistol in the back of your pants, the switchblade in your sleeve, and the knives in your boots. Kick them all away. ”

  How did he know where all my weapons were?

  My mother couldn’t have looked more shocked if she’d found out I was sleeping with half the Ashford High football team and smoking crack between touchdowns.

  I gave her my most reassuring look. She flinched. Apparently what I considered reassuring lately came off a little … savage, I guess. “It’s been a rough few months, Mom,” I said defensively. “I’ll explain it all later. Let my parents go,” I told the LM. “I’ll cooperate fully. You have my word. ”